“I must ask you again, Octoff. Will you keep my secrets?”
“Yes,” he said, and wished he could mean it.
The dog smiled. “I was sure.” The door’s muscles contracted and with a small pop the door lifted from its frame of cartilage.
A wash of unidentifiable smells gusted over Octoff as he stepped through into Beauty’s sanctum. It was a large room, well-lit by blazing pink biolume, and it was full of her Exotics. There were hundreds, in all the variations he had seen before and many even stranger.
Nearby, Exotics clustered around tables laden with unfamiliar foods. Along the wall to his left was a large alcove full of toad-crea-tures. At intervals across the vast floor, the patterned dwarves that Beauty called flesh poems stood on low risers, their stumpy bodies in declamat ory poses. Between them were clusters of fantastics, their colors and shapes a great crazy quilt of st range flesh. Inhuman eyes examined him, and the room was filled with a taut silence.
Speaker nudged him with her shoulder. “There’s something you should see.”
He followed the dog through a portico into a smaller room. Behind, a murmur swelled. In the center of the floor was a thronelike chair, facing a large circular pattern on the wall.
“Sit here, in Old Husband’s place,” Speaker said, standing by the chair.
Octoff lowered himself into the chair and waited. “Watch the screen,” Speaker said. “It’s linked to a sensory nexus in New Husband’s quarters.” Speaker laughed. “She doesn’t know.”
Octoff leaned forward, intent; on the light dancing in the screen. The picture took shape slowly. Lanilla sat, hunched over a long counter jumbled with comm gear. A chime rang, she put her left eye to a retinal scanner, and the telltale flashed green. She turned to peer intently into a small holocube.
The voice from the holocube was soft, but filled with a diy, careless power. “Your time is running out,” it said.
Lanilla answered, fear and supplication in her voice. “Listen to me,” she said. “You approved the plan, you said it was certain, you gave it your full support.”
“Yes... but I didn’t think you would be so slow, Lanny.”
Lanilla bit her lip. “‘Slow’? I’ve been here less than a week.”
There was a pause. “I’ll rephrase that, Lanny. I expected more speed from you, and less from the Law Convergence. The preservation bill is already on the floor, and you know what that means, I hope.”
Lanilla dropped her eyes. “How much time do you give it?”
“They read out the bill this afternoon. I’d estimate passage in perhaps two days, with all the pressure the Conservancy is putting behind it. If you haven’t done it by then... well, I hope you like it there, because that’s where I’ll leave you.”
Her face went pale. “No.”
“Lanny, Lanny. The deadfarms have given you a good life. Time to pay back. You’ll keep our boat from being rocked by that monstrosity, won’t you? If you don’t... well, someone loyal will have to keep an eye on it. For as long as it takes.”
Lanilla lifted her chin, and a bit of fire came back into her eyes. “The thing is already quite attached to him. Not enough, yet, but soon....”
“You’d better find a way to prod them. Two days, that’s just a guess. It might come sooner.”
“I can only do my best.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Well, keep to your transmission schedule, unless you’re dead.” Octoff heard a bloodless chuckle. “That’s another way you might do the job, Lanny. The other things were notoriously volatile. If you can annoy the Biomantic into killing you before the bill passes, that will serve. All we need is proof that it’s dangerous. If you should miss your schedule, we’ll cue the recorders, we’ll see what befell you... and then we’ll order in a burn bomb.”
Lanilla clicked off the cube without another word.
Speaker looked at him. “Do you understand, Octoff?”
He shook himself. “I can guess. If you behave yourself for two more days, she probably won’t be able to hurt you — that’s the way it sounds to me.” He tried to smile, but it was difficult. Two more days, he thought, two more days. I have to do something soon.
“I thought you should see this, Octoff. She speaks to her superiors twice a day, at noon and midnight.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I’m afraid she’ll try to harm you, if she can’t hurt me. You’re my very good friend, in spite of what she says.”
The dog looked intently into his face, as if searching for some reassurance. Octoff tried to return her gaze evenly.
Leaving through the throngs of Exotics, Octoff again felt the pressure of their regard.
“Is it you,” he asked, “looking out through all those eyes?”
“Oh, no, no. What a thought. I’d never be so rude. It’s just that they have so little to do, down here, and you’re an object of great curiosity.”
“They have their own minds?”
“Yes. They carry a neurotransponder in their brains, a bit of my own flesh, so I can enter them when I wish and control them when necessary, but they live their own lives, otherwise. Many are quite intelligent; you’d enjoy their conversation. That’s why I couldn’t do as New Husband ordered. They have a right to live. As much as anyone, though I built them from animals.”
He could tell Lanilla where Beauty had hidden her Exotics; it might be enough. The thought made him sick.
Octoff slept poorly. At first light he was up, siting on his bench, beside the bubble woman. She shimmered in the dawn, smiling her secret smile.
Octoff wrestled with his thoughts. He could hope for a little time before the decision forced itself upon him. His gaze kept coming back to the bubble woman. What might it be like to see Beauty as her Husband had seen her?
Octoff rose and peered at the transparent surface of her face, noticing the fine pores of her skin, the almost invisible crinkle of lines at the corners of her eyes, the sweetly curved lips. The details fascinated him. She might almost have been alive, except that she did not seem to breathe. But he had a sudden fancy that a crystalline pulse moved at her throat. Without thinking, he touched her there.
She was gone in an instant, the tiny fragments of the bubble floating away in a sparkling cloud. Octoff felt; the released gas gust over him, cool and spicy.
He breat hed the essence deep into his lungs, filling them over and over. He closed his eyes, smiling. The drug raced through his body. The sensation was overwhelming for a moment , and he shuddered, suddenly weak in the knees. He sat down, his hands clutching his head. He opened his eyes on a different world.
The plain white walls of the room glowed with a t housand subtle colors and the soft morning light sparkled around the edges of each shape. He sat for a few minutes, content to admire the surrounding perfection. He felt a surging admiration for Beauty and all her works.
Speaker appeared at his elbow. Octoff looked into the dog’s clear eyes, saw the adoration that suffused her face, and felt as if his heart would melt from his chest.
When she spoke, the voice was like honey, like air, like life distilled. “Come with Speaker. We’ll see what we’ll see.”
His thoughts were running slowly, and he stretched out a hand to be taken, before he remembered that Speaker had no hands. A brief sorrow washed through him, was gone before he could really feel it. He dropped his hand to the warm rough fur of Speaker’s shoulder. Linked together, they went down to the gardens.
He saw the same wonders he had seen before, but now they were almost too delightful to bear. The halls of the manse were magnificent, each proportion delighting the eye, but he sorrowed that the Exotics were forced to hide away. He saw that the manse was built for them, a vast; living setting for those living jewels.